What £22.95 a Week Leaves a Kinship Family to Find

Guardian's Allowance is real money and worth claiming, but on its own it is not enough to raise a bereaved child, and it was never designed to be. It is a flat weekly amount paid on top of Child Benefit, tax free and not means tested, and the current rate is £22.95 a week for each child. That works out at about ninety-two pounds every four weeks — a genuine contribution towards an extra child in the house, and a long way short of what it actually costs to take a grieving child into your home.

The people who claim it are usually grandparents, aunts, uncles, older brothers and sisters, or close family friends: kinship carers who stepped in because a child's parents had died. The state recognises that situation with a small, steady payment. It does not try to match what the child costs from week to week, and seeing that gap clearly is the difference between a household that plans around it and one that is quietly overwhelmed by it.

So the honest way to read the figure is as a contribution, not a wage for the job you have taken on. This page sets the weekly rate against what really lands on a kinship family's budget, points you to the other help you can claim alongside it, and explains why so few of the families entitled to Guardian's Allowance ever put a claim in.

What Guardian's Allowance actually is

Guardian's Allowance is paid by HM Revenue & Customs to someone bringing up a child whose parents have died. It sits on top of Child Benefit rather than replacing it, so a kinship carer who qualifies receives both, normally in the same four-weekly payment. There is a separate amount for each qualifying child, so a carer raising two orphaned siblings receives it twice over.

Two features make it unusually straightforward by the standards of the benefits system. It is tax free, so it does not touch your tax code or a self-assessment return. And it is not means tested, so your earnings, a partner's earnings and your savings do not reduce it — a working household and a household on benefits receive the same weekly figure. It is also ignored as income when Universal Credit and other means-tested benefits are worked out, so claiming it does not cut anything else you receive.

The one thing you do need is Child Benefit. Entitlement to Guardian's Allowance runs through Child Benefit for the same child, so you have to be receiving, or entitled to receive, Child Benefit before the allowance can be paid. You claim on form BG1, and a claim can be backdated by up to three months.

Source: HM Revenue & Customs, Guardian's Allowance: what you'll get and how to claim, gov.uk. The rate is £22.95 a week for each child for the 2026 to 2027 tax year and is reviewed each April.

What £22.95 a week really stretches to

Multiply the weekly figure out and you see its true shape. At £22.95 a week, Guardian's Allowance comes to about £92 every four weeks, or a little under £1,200 across a full year, for each child. Child Benefit is paid on top of that, and both are welcome. Neither was built to carry the cost of a child.

Put the figure against the ordinary running costs of a childhood and the gap is plain. Food, shoes that are outgrown twice a year, a winter coat, a school uniform, trips, a phone once they reach secondary school, the heating that stays on longer once there is a child at home — none of it is extravagant, and all of it adds up to far more than a hundred pounds a month. We set the weekly rate against those everyday costs in more detail in our closer look at what £22.95 a week really buys.

The figure does have one quiet strength worth naming. Because it is not means tested, it is the one piece of help that does not shrink as your income rises or vanish when your savings climb. For a kinship carer who works, that reliability matters: it is money you can count on every four weeks whatever else changes.

The costs a kinship household takes on overnight

The weekly rate is easier to judge once you see everything that arrives with the child. A bereaved child does not come with a budget attached, and the costs are rarely the ones a carer expects.

The biggest are often about space and time rather than day-to-day spending. A spare room becomes a bedroom, or a move to a larger home becomes necessary. A carer who was working full time may drop hours, or stop altogether, to be there for a child who has just lost a parent — and lost earnings are usually the largest cost of all, even though they never show up on a shopping list. Childcare for a younger child, wraparound care so you can keep a job, and the cost of getting to a school in a different area all land at once.

There are the costs grief brings, too. Bereaved children often need more of your time, sometimes counselling, sometimes a change of school. None of that is captured by a weekly figure conceived decades ago as a modest top-up. The point is not that Guardian's Allowance is mean; it is that it answers a small part of a large question, and a family that treats it as the whole answer will be caught short.

What else you can claim alongside it

Guardian's Allowance is meant to be one strand among several, so the first task is to make sure the others are in place.

• Child Benefit for each child, which is the gateway to Guardian's Allowance in any case.
• The child element of Universal Credit, if you claim it. A child you are now responsible for is added to your household and the child element is paid for them. Guardian's Allowance itself is ignored when your Universal Credit is worked out, so it does not reduce that award.
• Help with childcare costs, through Universal Credit or the government's childcare schemes, if you work.
• A local-authority allowance, where the council was involved in placing the child with you. If you are a kinship foster carer, a fostering allowance may be payable; if you hold a special guardianship order, ask about a special guardianship support allowance. These are discretionary and vary between councils, but they can be worth far more than Guardian's Allowance and are frequently missed.

Free help exists to work out the full picture. Citizens Advice and MoneyHelper, which is government-backed, can both run through what a kinship household is entitled to, and neither will try to sell you anything. Our own guide to bereavement benefits and state support sets out how the different payments fit together after a death.

Why so few families ever claim it

Guardian's Allowance is consistently among the least-claimed payments the state runs, and the reasons are not mysterious. There is no register of kinship carers, no letter that arrives to tell you the allowance exists, and no prompt built into the process of taking a child in. Many carers only discover it by accident, sometimes years later.

The link to Child Benefit is part of the problem. If Child Benefit for the child is still being paid into a dead parent's account, or was never moved across to you, the allowance that depends on it cannot start either. Sorting out Child Benefit first is therefore the practical first step — and it carries its own trap for higher earners, which we explain in the High Income Child Benefit Charge in the year a parent dies.

Because a claim can only be backdated three months, the cost of not knowing is real. A carer who learns about the allowance a year in has lost nine months of payments that cannot be recovered. If you are reading this and have not claimed, form BG1 is the thing to do this week, not next month.

When one of the parents is still alive

Many kinship carers assume Guardian's Allowance is only for children who have lost both parents, and stop there. That is the general rule, but it is not the whole rule. There are three situations in which the allowance can still be paid when one parent is alive: where that parent cannot be traced, where they are serving a long prison sentence or are detained by a court, and, in limited cases, where the parents had divorced.

Each route is narrow and each turns on evidence, so it is worth reading the specific account rather than guessing. We cover them separately: when only one parent has died and the other is still alive, where the surviving parent is serving a long sentence, and how to show that a surviving parent cannot be found. If your circumstances match one of these, the allowance may be open to you even though a parent is living.

The gap the state leaves, and planning for it

Step back and the shape of it is stark. When a parent dies and a relative takes the children, the state's standing answer is Child Benefit and £22.95 a week of Guardian's Allowance for each child, plus whatever means-tested support the new household qualifies for. That is a floor, not a plan. The difference between a floor and a plan is almost always money the parents arranged before they died.

For most families that money is not savings or a pension, which are rarely large enough while children are still small — it is life insurance. A policy written to pay out on a parent's death, and placed in trust for whoever would raise the children, is the usual way a guardian is actually funded: it puts a lump sum in the right hands quickly, outside the delays that can follow a death, so the person stepping in is not trying to raise a child on a weekly top-up alone.

If you are a parent thinking about who would raise your children, and on what, that is the question worth answering now rather than leaving to chance. An FCA-authorised broker can price cover against your own circumstances, and you can get life insurance quotes to see what protecting a future guardian would involve. What an insurer offers, and on what terms, depends on underwriting.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

Guardian's Allowance is a reserved benefit run by HMRC, so the payment and its conditions are the same across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland — the £22.95 weekly rate does not change from one nation to another. What differs is the local-authority support that can sit alongside it. Scotland has its own kinship care allowances, paid by councils to carers looking after a child under a kinship care order or where the child would otherwise be looked after. Special guardianship, and the support allowance that can come with it, applies in England and Wales. Northern Ireland has its own kinship and residence arrangements through Health and Social Care trusts. Wherever you live, check the local scheme as well as the national allowance, because the two are decided by different offices.

Frequently asked questions

How much is Guardian's Allowance?

A flat weekly amount for each child, paid on top of Child Benefit and usually every four weeks. It is tax free and not means tested, so earnings and savings do not reduce it. The rates are set each April and published by HMRC.

Is it meant to cover the cost of the child?

No. It is a contribution rather than a maintenance payment, and it was never designed to meet the cost of adding a child to a household. Food, clothing, school costs, a larger home and lost earnings all sit well outside what it provides.

What else can a kinship family claim?

Child Benefit, the child element of Universal Credit, and help with childcare costs if you work. Where the local authority placed the child with you, ask about a kinship care allowance, or a special guardianship support allowance if you hold that order.